


Choose Life

by De Orakle (Delphi)



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Trainspotting (1996)
Genre: Crossover, Drama, Drug Addiction, Established Relationship, First Meetings, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-05-30
Updated: 1999-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 15:37:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/De%20Orakle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark Renton finds his way back to an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose Life

The sickness has started: the cramps, the chills, the nausea, the delusions. At least I'm not so far gone that I can't tell that they're delusions. Unless I'm imagining that they're delusions.

Shite.

They're all here with me, everyone—they won't go away. I close my eyes and they're still here. My room, with the trains dancing drunkenly on the wall, has suddenly grown the size of a football field; the angles are all wrong and shifting. I think I'm going to vomit.

Begby's beside me under the sheets, stinking of whisky, threatening to kick in my head unless I get off the junk. Sickboy mocks me from the corner while Spud sits chained to the door frame, silently blaming me for not getting sent off to gaol with him. Baby Dawn's crawling along the ceiling, looking so alive until her head does a 180, staring at me with those dead eyes set in that rubbery shrunken face, mouth open. She's hungry.

Oh God, I'm so hungry for a fuckin' hit.

Somebody get me a hit. I'll do anything.

Oh God!

_Motherfucking Christ!_

It hurts...My guts are eating themselves, chewing out through my skin.

_Somebody help me, for God's sake!_

Help me.

Then everything spirals—Tommy, Begby, Sickboy, Spud—spinning so fast, and then it grinds to a halt like a bad Underworld video.

Everything freezes, warped and silent, and then I feel hands on my skin. The touch sends a jolt straight through my body, awakening the sex drive the heroin had killed off. Not Diane's young hands, bigger—but not Sickboy's either. They're strong hands that cool my skin and warm my insides. I hear a voice, soothing in my ear, piecing my shattered head back together. He sounds English. Fuck why I'd dream up a royal wanker while I'm coming down.

He whispers to me like he's inside my fucking mind. Pada-something. Sounds like a side dish in a curry shop.

Then, images more fucked up than anything I've dreamed up while high start flashing through my head from some epileptic film projector.

Me with some eighties poofter haircut. What the hell would I have to shoot up with to wear a ponytail and a braid?

Fighting someone with a flashlight.

Fucking some guy, only it's five million times better than fucking.

_We didn't have enough time._

For a second, I feel like I've just taken a shot of pure junk straight to the heart, attaining the perfect high I've been looking for all these years. The feeling that everything around me is being separated into tiny microns, and I can feel every single one. I feel completely part of all of the air and the bed and whoever the fuck is sitting beside me, touching my forehead. It's what I've been looking for all this time and then—

"Mark!"

I'm jerked back to hard, cold, reality with dad standing over me, rambling about getting me an AIDS test. I should close my eyes to sink back into the sweat-soaked sheets, but incredibly, I feel fine. I feel fucking great. I feel healthy and strong, like I can control every—what's it called—synapse in my body.

But I'm cut off now, alone, though the craving has waned. I'm depressingly sober. Fuck.  


* * *

_Three Months Later:_

Yeah, so I'm walking down some crowded street in New York City, which is a hell of a lot more confusing than London. After making my fortune by the whole business of ripping off Begby's drug money, I figured it would be best if I stayed out of Scotland and London, especially because I don't fancy letting Begby make my balls into lampshades.

I'm feeling better. I'm HIV negative, I eat, I've got a fucking boring real estate job selling shitty apartments to naive pricks, a shitty apartment of my own, a normal life. I've gained weight, and I feel myself getting stronger every day. Though, every once in a while when I can't sleep, I start to get this feeling. Like I'm wonderfully high, seeing every piece of the universe coming apart and wrapping around me. Like I'm not alone for a moment. I think it's something in the water. My mum always did warn me about America.

I look around me and try to spot the junkies, my former brethren. Yellow skin, clouded eyes, twitchy skin, and hungry stares. When I first wandered into this city, I was amazed that everyone walked right by them, never looking down, blind to anyone outside of their world. Now I find myself doing the same thing, deliberately looking away from the twitching meth addict on the corner and not even spotting a dealer until someone makes a buy right under my nose. Still, this is what I chose, although sometimes I wonder why. I'm so fucking bored.

I'm on my way to do some grocery shopping, believe it or not, and I plan to buy more than tins of soup. I made a list and everything. Suddenly, something in my head screams, _Turn around, you idjit!_ The same scream that used to warn me of a copper heading right straight for me.

I turn around, getting jostled by the moving pedestrian traffic that doesn't even pause for me. Sure enough, there's a copper, plainclothes, leaning against one of those ridiculous square American police cars. I almost turn right around to run like hell, out of habit, until I remind myself that I'm a fine upstanding citizen here, with a visa and all. I even pay taxes.

The cop is odd-looking, with a short beard and moustache, and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. I've become accustomed to seeing strange sights in New York. The cop's eyes are piercing as he meets my stare, and then he smiles slightly in recognition. He starts walking towards me.

And all of a sudden, I remember why I chose life.


End file.
